Scar Tissue (11 page)

I wish I could have blamed the dogs for the way my heart was pounding so hard I could hear whooshing in my ears.

Paula drew him over to the van, gesturing occasionally at the house and nodding as if he was making the right responses. It looked like a genuine job-interview, if on the hoof. How much was she telling him about his real job? After a few
minutes, he disappeared from view, returning with a bundle of clothes. Paula pointed him in the direction of the
outhouse
, still mercifully dog-free. When he emerged, she called us all down, and one by one we shook hands with him. Meg might have drooled over Todd. She positively slavered over Taz. Helen giggled rather a lot. I found it hard to look at anyone, especially Taz: no, nothing to do with the lenses. He spoke to each of us with rather less enthusiasm than the occasion deserved. He positively froze my smile.

‘How are you on heights?’ Paula demanded. ‘Because I’d really like to finish the very highest level work today. However late we have to work,’ she added firmly.

‘I’m not fussed,’ he said.

Second lot of Brownie points to him. I’d awarded the first lot for his prompt response – he’d taken only about three hours to get here – and for twigging so quickly what was needed. But I knew he didn’t have a head for heights, and although I knew Paula had only suggested that he worked high up so he could talk to me, I countered, ‘I’ve almost finished. Couldn’t he start preparing the window-frames on the level below me?’

Paula looked hard at me, and at him, but nodded. ‘Those aren’t too bad – should be just a matter of rubbing down and spot priming. But if you think anything else needs doing, tell me or Ca – Lucy. OK? We’ll work on till six-thirty or so. The light may get awkward after that and I don’t want anyone squinting into the sun and going splat.’

He laughed. I’d forgotten how he laughed. I turned away so he wouldn’t see my face.

Although we could have talked, we didn’t. I could look
down and see between the boards the top of his head and the quick movement of his hands. So why didn’t I? Because something was definitely wrong with the electricity that should have been snapping between us. What had happened to Caffy and Heathcliff? I ought to be lusting for him: the only strong emotion I felt was a desperate hope that he wouldn’t betray us by being incompetent.

Tea break, and great waves of blushes flooded both Meg and Helen. Paula smiled more than usual. I got back to work as fast as I could. No. I wasn’t jealous because he was flirting with them. I was wondering why I wasn’t jealous.

It was nearly seven before I got Taz to myself. Helen had giggled and blushed her farewells, after Paula had squashed Meg’s suggestion that we all adjourn to the pub.

As casually as I could, I asked, ‘Where are you based?’ mouthing ‘Ashford’ so he knew.

‘Ashford,’ he said clearly.

‘Well, would you mind giving Lucy a lift?’ Paula asked. ‘That way I get to keep the van and I can round everyone up tomorrow.’

‘You want me tomorrow too?’

Paula nodded sagely. ‘You’ve made a good start on the grottiest job. Maybe we’ll see what you can do with a
paintbrush
.’

‘Thanks. Shall I bring Lucy with me?’

‘That’d be very helpful. Right, boy and girls – back here at nine tomorrow. OK?’

‘What now?’ Taz asked as we walked to his car. Whatever his normal vehicle, this was an Escort that had seen better days.

I waited till we were safely inside what felt like a Turkish bath. We wound down the windows as fast as we could but it seemed safer than outside. All the same, I managed no more than a mutter: ‘We set out as if for Ashford, then you do some fancy nipping through the lanes making sure we’re not being followed to where I’m living at the moment. A quick shower and then you can treat me to a pub supper.’

‘Me treat you? Thought I was doing you a favour.’

‘I bet you earn more than I earn per hour.’

‘I doubt it.’

I told him my weekly pay.

He whistled. ‘How can you live on that?’

‘Truth is, it’s hard. But it’s better than my life in Brum, so I’m not complaining. If you prefer, there’s some stuff in the Daweses’ fridge.’

‘Who are the Daweses?’

‘I think,’ I said as I fastened my seatbelt, ‘that I’d better begin at the beginning, don’t you?’

Taz didn’t reply.

There I was, ready to give chapter and verse of why and how we needed him and he was totally bound up in starting and driving his car.

I could have howled. But bloody well wouldn’t. I didn’t do howling, remember, not for men, and I wasn’t going to start now. Hell, in an ideal world, Taz would have pulled over as soon as he could into some convenient lay-by – preferably one unsullied by reminders of my former life – and said something like, ‘Let me look at you, Caffy. After all these years… Why, you’re beautiful!’

In fact, when at last he looked at me it was out of the corner of his eye. He was far more interested in the bends ahead than in my appearance – which I suppose was only right. At last he said, ‘I take it this is some sort of disguise. And they called you Lucy Taylor. May one ask why?’ He sounded weirdly like his mother, a lovely woman as I said, one I’d have liked as a mother-in-law, but perhaps a bit twinsetty.

‘It is best if I begin at the beginning,’ I said. ‘You may even want to take notes. Would you rather wait till we get back home? Left here, please.’

‘That’s taking us away from Ashford,’ he objected.

‘I don’t live in Ashford. I live south of Tenterden, overlooking Romney Marsh. At least, I do at the moment. Not my own place, I hasten to add. I had to leave there in a hurry.’

‘Rent problems?’ he asked idly, dropping to second for a tight corner.

What had happened to the committed, concerned young man I’d known and … loved?

‘Bomb problems,’ I said. ‘A letter bomb, to be precise, and what may be another, probably sent by my old friend Clive Granville.’

At last I had his attention good and proper. ‘Granville! What have you done to upset him?’

‘Stayed alive. Not died in a drug-induced stupor. Not contracted HIV – not that he’s to know that, of course, but –’ But it seemed important that Taz should know. ‘Anyway, one day I nearly run into him in Tenterden. Forty-eight hours later my favourite postie gets blown in to the middle of next week.’

‘So this lot –’ he pointed at me with his thumb ‘– is part of some witness protection deal. I’d have thought you’d be better off in some safe house.’

‘That wasn’t an option. The policeman who interviewed me wanted to blame me, not protect me. But I think he’s bent, so he would, wouldn’t he?’

‘Look here, you’ve got to have pretty strong evidence if you’re going to make allegations like that!’ His mother’s voice again.

‘I told you I should have begun at the beginning,’ I said sadly.

After a shower, courtesy of Jan and Todd, and a cold beer he’d dug out of the fridge, Taz seemed much more his old self. He was as intrigued as Paula by the fittings of the mobile home, wandering round as if he were a prospective buyer.

‘Not a bad place to doss, this,’ he said. ‘Done well for yourself here, Caffy.’

‘I told you. This isn’t mine. It’s the Daweses’. I’ve got what I call my eyrie in Fullers itself.’

‘Surely they –’

‘I’d have been in the way,’ I said firmly. I wouldn’t point out I hadn’t been invited; I didn’t want him getting the idea that the Daweses had been anything other than wonderful. ‘And in any case, Fullers is safer.’

Something made him look at me sharply, the way he used to look when he was trying to rescue me. ‘Why don’t we have another beer and you can tell me everything? And then we’ll go and get that meal and I’ll tell you what I propose to do.’

We had a bite in the Crown, the local pub. It was still warm enough for us to sit outside, in the furthest corner of the garden, just like lovers avoiding interruption. In fact bats were the only things to venture into our air space. I was entranced.

‘You’re not scared of them?’

What a conventional question: he should have known me better.

‘Not after that Scottish bloke dying of rabies?’ he prompted.

‘I’m not proposing to try and catch one. Anyway, these are a different type, I think. Weren’t his confined to north of the Border?’

‘And you’re not scared in Fullers? All on your own?’ Didn’t he remember I’d never been girly?

‘So long as no one knows I’m there, why should I be? More escape routes than in the caravan, for one thing. And anyway, if they’re tracking activities via Jan’s mobile, then they’ll find them in London somewhere, so I shouldn’t be bothered.’

‘What about mice and other beasties?’

I turned to look him straight in the eye. ‘After Clive Granville, how can a mouse scare me? Anyway, you told me that you were going to get back our lives for us. The Daweses have a house to renovate. Paula has a business to run. I have a job to do. And the only way we can do these things is if we’re not afraid of death by parcel. Which reminds me, shouldn’t dealing with said parcel be your priority?’

‘Where did you say it was?’

‘In a far corner of the garden.’ I grabbed his wrist. ‘My God! What if some little animal nibbles it? It’d activate it and blow us all up!’

‘So might heavy dew, unless the bag’s waterproof. Oh, well,’ he said, sinking the last of his half in one gulp, ‘I always did say it was better to think on your feet.’

Fortunately, the Isle of Oxney wasn’t a mobile dead spot. The advice Taz received was simply to move the package into one of the bins, and make sure it stayed covered. The person at the other end of the line was clearly unwilling to ruin his or his colleagues’ Saturday evening. He insisted that things were best done by daylight, though I’d seen on TV impressive lights illuminating enough scenes of crime to make me doubt this. But Taz assured me that the aim was to behave in a very low-key manner, not alerting any more people than necessary to what was going on. The army, complete with armoured cars and goodness knows what else, would become an immediate news item. Special Branch might not.

‘Special Branch?’ I squeaked. ‘But I thought they chased overseas baddies.’

‘There are far more links with organised crime and baddies, as you so charmingly call them, over here than you realise. And the death at Crabton Manor and those immigrants suggest big fish.’ He patted the pocket with the film cassette in it. To his credit Taz hadn’t doubted anything I’d said. Occasionally he’d stopped to ask for clarification of various details, but each time he’d nodded in what looked like agreement and continued with his notes. ‘Tomorrow you’ll have lunch, ever so casually, with a very senior policeman –’

It was I who shook my head. ‘Can you really see that as a scenario? Me in my dungarees meeting some smart gent?’

I’d forgotten how he could wrinkle his nose in distaste. ‘Are the dungarees really necessary?’

‘If we’re both to be safe undercover as decorators,’ I said. ‘In any case, Paula’s got a contract to keep to. We’re her employees, remember.’

‘You really mean to carry on?’

‘Don’t you? OK, you don’t have to. She can tell van der Poele that you didn’t suit, and we’re back to three women again.’ So Taz would go back to the city where he belonged and leave us to it. ‘But I can’t let her down, Taz. She’s been a good boss to me, never throwing my past at me even when I’d really pissed her off about something. Never. Ever. She needs the money from this job so that she can pay Meg and Helen. And me,’ I added, almost as an afterthought.

‘Well, you’re going to have to talk to someone pretty soon, aren’t you? For your own sake,’ he observed coolly. ‘Not to mention nailing Marsh, if he does turn out to be bent. No, I’m not doubting you, not for one minute,’ he insisted, as my hackles rose. ‘I’m more interested in sorting
out the hows and whys and whens than expressing myself properly. Now, I’ll make sure you’re safe for the night and be with you early – by eight at the very latest.’

‘Aren’t you going to stay?’ I asked stupidly. ‘No, I mean here, in the caravan. I didn’t mean –’ I ground to a halt while I was losing.

‘I’ve arranged to stay with a friend,’ he said, with both embarrassment and an obvious desire to end the discussion, ‘in Maidstone.’ And a flush worthy of Meg, starting somewhere near his navel, I should hope, spread slowly and inexorably up his throat, across his face and into his ears.

‘OK,’ I said, taking the hint. ‘Let me finish here – the loo’s cleaner – and I’ll lock up behind us.’ I waved him a breezy good night. And retired to my eyrie to cry my eyes out.

Except I didn’t. Cry, that is. Giving up for the time being on the rather tricky language of
Evelina
, by the light of my friends’ torch I got deeply involved in first one, then another of those
Dubliners
stories, ending with the two morally bankrupt young men in
Two Gallants
. That’s the nice thing about books. They remind you that some things never change.

True to his word, Taz was knocking on the mobile home’s door soon after seven. His friend must be very tolerant about his comings and goings. He couldn’t have got there much before midnight and must have been up by six.

I’d found bacon and eggs and was ready to do an old-fashioned fry-up. There were even a couple of wrinkled mushrooms and a tired tomato.

‘Cholesterol,’ he said.

‘Well, the milk’s off and the bread’s as hard as the devil’s head. We’ll have to stop off at a garage or newsagent’s to get replacements. But until then, all I can offer you is a rather manky orange, a sad grapefruit and a French apple. Or dry toast, of course.’ Jan had lashed out on one of those tiny packs of very expensive French butter. I’d forgotten to get any spread to replace it when I’d used the last for yesterday’s lunch. Let Taz hair-shirt if he wanted to. I got busy with the grill-pan. (Even I don’t fry bacon!) Very soon Taz was sniffing hopefully. I took the hint.

So the fluffy young woman who knocked on the door was greeted by the smell I’ve always dreamed of waking up to. And she had no qualms about accepting my generous offer of Jan’s hospitality.

‘Cressida. I’m from the Special Branch,’ she said flashing an ID. In all probability she had degrees from the best universities and black belts in any number of martial arts. But she spoke in a kittenish voice that made me want to scream. ‘Toby – that’s one of my colleagues – is looking at your explosive device now. He’d probably welcome breakfast, too.’

I peered round the door. Not an armoured car in sight, just a couple of trailer vans, the sort people used to move house. They were taking ‘low key’ seriously, weren’t they? ‘That’s tough, I’m afraid. That’s the last of the bacon on your plate. Unless you want to share it with him?’ I might have given him some of mine if he’d been a Troilus, not a Toby.

It was soon agreed that it was kindest if we tucked in and left no visible traces of the meal to distress Toby. He couldn’t fail to notice the smell, however, and looked duly hangdog
when Taz tossed the manky orange in his direction. The trouble was, his complexion rather resembled that of the fruit, as if he’d tried to cure acne by over-exposure to a sun lamp.

‘I’m going to need specialist equipment,’ he announced, peeling the orange reluctantly to reveal something nasty. ‘So my aim will be to get it removed from here.’

‘You’re going to risk that? After what happened to Arthur?’

‘Ronnie, our little robot, will risk it. He’ll pop it into a blast-proof container. In any case, if it’s made by the expert Taz tells me you suspect it is, then it’ll be pretty stable.’

‘Unless there’s a timing device,’ I pointed out. I wasn’t sure he was patronising me by giving the robot a silly name or was following the custom of putting together a long and sophisticated set of initials to make one.

‘I’ll warn Ronnie to bear that in mind,’ Toby said, a half sneer on his face – though that might have been in response to Cressida’s offer of chewing-gum.

I left Taz to make whatever phone calls he had to make and retired to my eyrie to fit the lenses. They’d made me practise inserting and removing them, of course, and I’d had no difficulty slipping them out last night. This morning was a different matter altogether. The little things had lives of their own, and showed an affection for the index fingers supposed to be popping them in that was almost touching. Just when I thought I’d have to give up, they went in, one by one. There, I was Lucy again, not Caffy.

I’d taken so long I wasn’t surprised to hear Taz yelling for
me. I called him up, and showed him the rest of the place. To my horror he obviously saw it as a heap of old bricks that was going to cause far more trouble than it was worth. Even though all the major repairs had been done, and Fullers was simply awaiting our cosmetic efforts, he could hardly wait to get out of the place. But he steered me back to my eyrie.

‘We’ll meet my contact after we knock off work,’ he said. ‘So take your glad-rags with you.’

‘Taz,’ I said, with as much patience as I could muster, ‘you’ll find we’re both filthy by six and need a shower.’

‘He wants to see us at seven so we’ll have to knock off early,’ he said.

‘The other thing,’ I said carefully, ‘is that I don’t have any glad-rags. I’ve got slightly smarter jeans and this top.’ I held them up for his inspection.

He looked aghast. ‘Surely you can do better than that.’

‘How? And indeed why?’

‘Well, for this evening, for instance, we shall be meeting in a decent hotel.’

‘The first decent hotel I’ve been in since I came off the game,’ I observed deliberately.

He flushed again. ‘You had good gear then –’

‘And sold it all.’ Time to see what being brutal would do. ‘To support my habit. Remember, that’s what drug addicts do. They sell everything, and steal some more and sell that.’ Not that I’d ever stolen. A bit to do with moral probity, more to do with Taz’s support. But I could certainly understand the temptation. ‘If I asked Jan and Todd they’d fit me out from top to toe, but they’ve given me so much I couldn’t ask for anything I didn’t really, really need.’

‘Sorry. Of course. You’ve done very well,’ he said in a tone I couldn’t place. Was he trying to get back into social worker mode? Or was he trying to remember what we’d once meant to each other. Straightening, he tried again. ‘But think – haven’t you really got an outfit you keep for what Mother would call “best”?’